Plasma display panels are currently expected to replace cathode ray tubes for many uses such as televisions, monitors, and other video displays. One important advantage of plasma display panels is that a relatively large display area can be provided with relatively minimal thickness as compared to cathode ray tubes.
The general construction of plasma display panels includes generally sheet-like front and back glass substrates having inner surfaces that oppose each other with a chemically stable gas hermetically sealed therebetween by a seal between the substrates at the periphery of the panel. Elongated electrodes covered by a dielectric layer are provided on both substrates with the electrodes on the front glass substrate extending transversely to the electrodes on the back glass substrate so as to thereby define gas discharge cells or pixels that can be selectively illuminated by an electrical driver of the plasma display panel. The panels can be provided with phosphors to enhance the luminescence and thus also the efficiency of the panels. The phosphors can also be arranged in pixels having several subpixels for respectively emitting the primary colors red, green, and blue to provide a full color plasma display panel.
The conventional construction of back glass substrates for color plasma display panels has elongated gas discharge troughs and barrier ribs that space the troughs from each other so as to generally isolate each column of pixels within each trough from the columns of pixels on each side thereof and thereby provide good color separation and pixel definition.
In plasma display panels, it is becoming increasingly more desirable to have larger display screens with more display lines and more intensity levels, without decreasing the picture quality. Known driving techniques for both color and monochrome alternating current plasma display panels include addressing periods in which charge quantities are retained by selected pixels, and sustain periods during which the charge quantities are excited to illuminate the selected pixels. To increase the reliability of pixel addressing, discharge priming is performed prior to addressing a group of display lines. The discharge priming provides priming particles which may be space charges, metastable atoms, or photons.
Some known techniques for driving plasma display panels employ a reset sequence of typically hundreds of microseconds which requires high voltage bulk erase and write pulsing, and an extensive conditioning time prior to addressing to provide discharge priming for addressing. One example of an existing driving technique is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,541,618 issued to Shinoda which describes the use of subframes having a concurrent addressing period and a concurrent display period for all scan electrodes or display lines. Another example of an existing driving technique is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,436,634 issued to Kanazawa which describes carrying out the accumulation of wall charges or charge quantities in the addressing period on every other display line, and the maintenance discharge in the maintenance discharge period on every display line.